Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, January 4, 1903, Page 26

Where the Women Work in Coal Mines THREE (Copyright, A 1903, by Frank G. Carpent 1ES, Belgium, Dec. 23.—(Sp« cial Correspondence of The Bee.) I am in the heart of one of the richest coal mining regions of Eu rope. Belgium is only about one-third the size of Indiana, but it has deposits of coal and iron which make it hum like a bee hive. It is the busiest workshop upon the continent, and it sup ports about as many people to the square mile as any country of the world. Its an nual product of coal amounts to 22,000,000 tons. It uses the greate part of this at home, and also imports fuel from Germany and England. At present the people are looking to the United States as a possible gource of manufacturing fuel, and tho day may yet come when the mills here will be largely run through coal from the United States, The Belgium mining conditions are en tirely different from those of our country Our mines are near the surface, and it costs but little to get the coal to the cars, Those of Belgium are far down under the carth, and every ton has to be lifted by machinery to the surface. Some of the mines which 1 visited today are more than a half mile deep. The water has to be fought at every turn, and mighty pumps are employed to keep the works dry. There are tunnels cutting the earth this way and that at a depth of 2,000 feet. Over them are other tunnels, and the whele country is a catacomb, made by getting out the coal. The mines have to be timbered. The wood s cut from the forests nearby, but the most of it is not over six inches thick, and as it comes to the mines it looks like telegraph poles, each fifty feet long, tapering to a point at the end Such timber stands in great stacks about each mine. It is un loaded from the cars by women, who handle the poles like ¥o many Amazons. This coal region is far diffecrent from those of Pennsylvania, Ohlo or Tennessee There it is mountainous. Here at Wasmes the land is flat, and the only el vations are from the dumps of the mines The coal here is filled with waste. It has to be gorted and the refuse is carried out upon cars. There is so much of it that a pyra midal mountain soon up beside each mine, standing cut like a black cone against th blue sky. There are such pyramids everywhere in this part of Belgium. Some of them are dead, the mines whic h produced them having worked and aban- doned. Others have ladders up their backs and a framework on the where women push (he cars along and with a rattling gound empty them. Some of the pyramids are smoking. There is much sulphur in the coal and spontaneous combustion often starts a fire which burns on for years In stances are known of people going to sleep on the dumps and being suffocated by the fumes and gases, Take your stand with me on one of these coal mountains just vutside the mining town of Wasmes and look See the farms covered with rich crops, with these coal mounds rising above them. There is rises been out top about you one at our right with great bug like bags crawling over it. Take your flield glass and look at them. They are not bags They are women who are picking up the coal that has been left in the waste. There comes a car along the coal mountain Two wemen are pushing it and with the glats you can their muscles swell as with bare cast it on the dump, almost see arms they Now look at that mound at the left It is hundreds of feet high, and, like the others about it, iu is an evidence of the enormous waste that the miners have to contend with. Every bit of coal that is brought to the surface has to be picked over, and the waste is evidently more than the coal itself Near every mound you see the huge build ings of the coal workers. They are not un like those of the United States, but the gcenes about them are different In the United States the work is done al together by men. Here most of the labor above the surface is performed by women And such women! Lusty young girls of SUtULIONS Are 100 WiBMuL LW Buppiy. A BELGIAN GIRLS LOADING BRICK. BELGIAN GIRLS PUSHING COAL from 16 to 20. Pretty girls! rosy cheeck round armed and plump, with fac smutty with coal dust, but at the same time comely! Their eyes are bright and their wuty is accentuated by the coal dust on their faces through which the red flames forth like that of the dark moss rose. They are very tiger lilies set in a background of black diamonus. Come with me and let us visit one of the mines We enter the great work where the mighty shaft is jerking up and down raising the coal to the surface. At the mouth of the opening stand a half dozen of Belgian girls, their heads done up in blue and white handkerchief turbans, their sleeves rolled up high above the el- and their shapely ankles plainly showing between the ends of their skirts wind their white wooden clogs. See them grasp that car the engine stops and shove it over the rails to where it is to be dumped for the sorters. As they do so gang girls takes their places to handle the next car and others shoot the emptics back to the other side of the shaft There is no fooling about this. The women these bows as another of work like bees, and with the strength of Lorses. They do more than the men, and they are, I am told, more conscientious in their work Leave the shaft and come with me to the sorters. The coal rolls down a chute into the cars. Women stand at the side of the chute and help it onward with hoes Girls of 14 or 20 sit further down picking the refuse and slate out of the coal with their hands Still further on there are more turbaned, bare-armed maidens, sootly dirty, working away as fast as their can move, and in the into which the coal drops, there are other women hoeing the coal way and ihat sorting the waste All the work is done by the piece, and the girls are paid in propor- tion to the amount they perform 1 asked as to the wages, and was told that the rate railroad car this is 2 cents a basket, and that the best work- can pick about a basket and a half every hour, thus earning as muc h as 30 cents in their day of twelve hours And still the women miners of Belgium are far better off today than they have ever been in the past. Their condition has been notoriously bad. For a long time lit- tle children were employed in the mines They were harnessed in carts and coal cars with and chains so that they crawled on their hands and knees dragging to the mouth of ths straps along the coal shaft Now women under 21 are prohibited by law from working unde round, and hence those whom you see on the surface are young girls They could get better wages down below and many of them will leave the surface work and go into the mines as soon as they are old enough As a result, the surface girls are not bent and broken, and those 1 saw were as well developed physically as the prize golf girls IN WASMES, A BELGIAN MINING TOWN cf the toiling Unitec like 1 Sta S0 1w tes. any cars this way and that. great lumps of coal weighing from fifteen to twenty pounds each, and others were do- ing al 1 sorts would be done by men. And still th horses, Som of work which we:e pushing the e were lifting in Americe In one place a ditch was being dug and lined with t rick and cement. A girl of 15 was mixing the mortar with a hoe, anl a littl sturdy e furt girls wheelbarrow, her on were which a upon the car when it was full. working hard, out in white beads upon their dusty fac 1 took a photograph of them, and my he and at a the loading bri perspiration bricks fourth girl ck pile three upon a pushed They were stood came into my throat as they smiled. coal less, b ed much I have said that the women who sort the arn about 30 cents a day. Some get out there are others who make as as 40 cents, and in the mines they are paid as high as 46 cents. Men miners get 79 or 80 cents underground, and about 50 cents at the surface. Boys of 11 and 15 are paid cents, and children about 20 cents and upward Altogether, there are 124,000 miners in Belgium, and of them all I doubt whether 10 per cent make $1 a day And still the B ages f average year is more than 300. hours are the rule. rom ten to number elgian working day aver- twelve hours, and the of working days every Low wages and long There are 750,000 work- ing people here, and of these nine-tenths work ten, eleven or more hours per day Of all the workers one-fourth make less than 40 cents per day; one-fourth from 40 to 60 cents, and another fourth from 70 to 80 cents per diem, Women are everywhere paid less than the men, and about half of the female workers make le than 30 cents a day while in the whole country of more than 6,000,000, half of whom are women, only 395 women get as much as 80 cents a day Among who those The w sexes ork those the work be who under hard st-paid and d are th won ound u egrading It s working here the en in are mines un away day after day in the semi-darkness, and in time makes them animals. In old age they are little better than the horses and don keys which work with them, and which stay in the mines until they die. Some of the horses will live from ten to twenty years after going down underground, but they become perfectly blind at the end of three years I have been interested in the life of the people. Every great mine has its dwelling houses built about it, a collection of little two-story bricks buiit together in blocks Each house has five rooms, two on the ground floor, two above and a little attic under the roof. The families are large and the average number of children is six or seven I'he miners are miserably poor Nearly every one pays a rent of $19 or $20 a year for his but only the fe save money. The people are great drinkers In this region every third house is and the most of the wages The people drink alcohol, drink as well as the men home, west 1 saloon, drinks women for the 20 and Belgium spends more than eight times as much for liquor as it does for schools, and the average drink bill is about $5 per head or § per family. 1 am surprised at the numt of saloons They are known as “estaminet ' and you see them everywhere There is hardly a block in the city without one or more, and they are scattered along the country roads. There are more than 200,000 saloons in Belgium, and it is said that one person in every thirty of the whole population is employed in selling intoxicat ing drinks. Many of the workmen get drunk on Satur day and lay off over Monday ditions prevail in England, ness is, Similar con- where drunken if anything, worse than here. of workingmen's as sociations in Belgium. The men have their trades their co-operative soci There is one kind of organization, “Mutualities,” which Ther> are There are a number unions and eties known 50,000 as has over members for societies mutual help so formed that the members support each other in times of trouble, pro viding medical attendance and other such things Many of the societies are protected by the government, and to some the state gives subsidies, increasing their funds for med ical attendance and support in time of sick ness. The state now has pensions for such workingmen of over 65 who need them and also associations which insure the lives of workingmen at low rates Belgium has a ministry of industry and laber which has to do with matters relat ing to workingmen, and there is also what is known as the superior council of labor organized to consider labor intercsts and prepare measures regulating them for pres entation to parliament This council is composed of sixteen workingmen, sixteen manufacturers and sixteen scientists. It is said to be of great value to labor interests The governments are becoming more and more paternal in many of the European countries. They are taking the place of a father to the people and trying to benefit them in a variety of ways. In Belgium the state has erected dwellings for working men in certain localities, and has arranged s0 that they can buy them on ¢ y terms It is helping the farming interests by schools of agriculture, and through its rall- road service is reducing ights and facil itating the marketing. I have spoken of the ostal arrangements of Switzerland and France, wkereby the farmer can express his goods to consumers through the p fices. Here in Belgium the government ha put on fast trains for England for the shij ment of dairy products. It facilitates trade CARS ind it on the producing classes, seems to be the outlook to help I am surprised at the enormous manuf: turing industry of Belgium a very beehive of work 000 people, and fully work making something to sell. The fac- tories are thick in the black country of Englana, and the land teems with housge industry. There are about 26,000 work- shops which employ the average only three hands each, and an enormous amount of cotton and linen cloth is woven at home The country is It has about 6,000,- ),000 of them are at as as on On the eastern edge of the Belgian coal field is Liege, which has 175,000 people, and which was built up out of manufac tures of iron. It is the Sheffiecld of the country, making vast quantities of firearms for home use and export. It bas 30,000 workmen, who make nothing but guns, and most of these work at their own homes The manufacturer furnishes the material and the workmen take it home and make the different parts of a gun. One man may be employed upon locks, another on barrels, getting from 2 to 3 cents for his work much this of each gun. It machinery is only firearms. Parts We get Liege, which The on is only recently that been introduced, and with the cheaper Kkinds has use of guns many and are made gun are also of our the made nowhere of making guarded, to for export barrels from gun barrels in the world Damask barrels being handed down Only the most skilled can make bar- rough-bored barrels great quantities; they 70 cents when also Damask se secret the carefully from father the son of rels are workmen The turned from ady for When tled study these ordinary out in cost to 60 apiece, export the United mining the Belgian country imports tons of coal a States troubles market with profit something like year, the most of it coming from France, rmany and England, and necessitating comparatively heavy freight cha There six of steamers between Antwerp and the United and American coal should be landed at low The freight rates the present are based upon the and are consequently high, The Belgium will not compare the best grades our coal. The cite the hardness Pennsylvania weight coal has finally sot its expoiters our can Thi 2,000,00 are lines sailing States there rates of grain rates coal of not with anthra nor bril and it Belgian per slack, so making of briquettes here liancy of is lighter bituminous that it is rather has the product, of the cent Some has 75 the than for export of the ased for Some Belgium the mines area eventually does parts of Europ« for American nursed a business will materially which have limited 1o given the impor! only here, but should be a and if can be out, and country more in all market fully which of trade as will than it coal is have Not there coal now care built up increase the balance already in favor FRANK G. CARPENTER Rabbit Hunting Janu our In to be growt with b he tainment Lhunt find brace of ATy, says found in thicke agles Country Life tangle bunny is bramble to be When furnish a Those rare close run for a enter- the to a bring and few of kill- delight o? dogs work. It rabbit was it the times small circle before holding opportunities to of Indeed the spir and tramped he is out or in mood bit of music of run will lively who love the pleasure in they unravel twists and bunny Indeed no for the g the ometimes seems as if aceful he will play listening s as all the and turns wiles put thei ing the game watching and not a 8 in with intention but pure arir the aware fo half flording many 1 study the oat heir pe intentio hour or more up observe 1 1lit quite ways of this | he seems of the g-leg to nter into delightful game, and a winter's afternoon can be thus